Fort Selkirk is a former

trading post A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded. Typically the location of the trading post would allow people from one geographic area to tr ...

on the Yukon River at the confluence of the Pelly River in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

Yukon Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...

. For many years it was home to the Selkirk First Nation (

Northern Tutchone The Northern Tutchone are a First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group living mainly in the central Yukon in Canada. Language and culture The Northern Tutchone language, originally spoken by the Northern Tutchone p ...

History

Archaeological evidence shows that the site has been in use for at least 8,000 years. Robert Campbell established a

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business di ...

trading post nearby in 1848. In early 1852, he moved the post to its current location. Resenting the interference of the Hudson's Bay Company with their traditional trade with interior Athabaskan

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

, Chilkat

Tlingit The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),

First Nation warriors attacked and looted the post that summer on Saturday, August 21, 1852. The fort was rebuilt about 40 years later and became an important supply point along the Yukon River. At age 28, under the command of Inspector John Douglas Moodie,

Francis Joseph Fitzgerald Francis Joseph Fitzgerald (12 April 1869 – 11 February 1911) was a Canadian who became a celebrated Boer War veteran and the first commander of the Royal North-West Mounted Police detachment at Herschel Island in the Western Arctic (1903). Fro ...

was the first person of European descent to chart an overland route from

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...

to Fort Selkirk,

via northern

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

and the Pelly River (1897). The voyage took eleven months, having covered about 1,000 miles. As a result of this achievement, Fitzgerald was promoted corporal in 1899.Canadian Biography Online - Fitzgerald
/ref> Fort Selkirk was essentially abandoned by the mid-1950s after the

Klondike Highway The Klondike Highway is a highway that runs from the Alaska Panhandle through the province of British Columbia and the territory of Yukon in Canada, linking the coastal town of Skagway, Alaska, to Dawson City, Yukon. Its route somewhat pa ...

bypassed it and Yukon River traffic died down.

Restoration and historic status

Many of the buildings have been restored and the Fort Selkirk Historic Site is owned and managed jointly by the Selkirk First Nation and the Yukon Government's Department of Tourism and Culture. There is no road access. Most visitors get there by boat, though there is an airstrip, Fort Selkirk Aerodrome, at the site.

References

External links

Virtual Museum CanadaYukon Heritage Resources Unit
Selkirk Klondike Gold Rush Hudson's Bay Company forts Ghost towns in Yukon {{Yukon-geo-stub

History

Restoration and historic status

See also

References

External links